Bear with me friends, this one’s a doozy! You start in the “prologue” section on your exploration vessel. Simply talk to each of the highlighted crew and head to the bridge to progress. Once you speak to the captain, ikthians appear and abduct you and the crew, beginning the “main” section of the mission.

You awaken inside a containment field. Use your modified action bar to taunt your captor until you annoy it enough to open your cage. Once you’re free, deal with this guy and then turn to help your fellow captives. Each of the 4 containers has a different access code, and entering too many wrong codes will zap and destroy anything still inside. You can still get a gold medal if everyone gets zapped, but can you live with yourself? There is a lore object just outside of this room that contains the codes, which are:

Protostar: 3596

Cubig/misc: 879

Rowsdower: 441

Humanoid: 975

After they’ve been dealt with one way or the other you can use a console to open the next area. I tend to clear everything out of the middle because we’ll be coming back here several times before we’re done. Occasionally you will notice ikthian weapons on the ground, pick them up and use them with CTRL+F1 to advance your objective. You can only carry one weapon at a time so be sure to use them as you find them. The weapon has a random chance of either applying a very strong bleed, a weakness, or backfiring and causing an enrage. Use against strong enemies at your own risk.

There are lots of big guys here.

From the central chamber, I begin with the west path. Along this corridor, keep an eye out for freebot parts. When you reach the room at the end you’ll need to take out two large enemies and a miniboss. Each can be pulled separately and dragged back to the entrance to the room for safety. The miniboss does occasionally patrol around, so be careful. Once the room is clear you can make a quick trip around the perimeter, jamming scrap metal into the engines and collecting freebot parts. There is a table near the entrance where you can assemble the parts back into Clamp, then make your way to the central chamber again.

Rescue everyone from these experiments

Next we’re heading down the northern hallway. Don’t forget to pick up and use the ikthian weapons along the way. This path opens up into a much larger room where you will need to free crew members from ikthian experiments, mostly by tapping “F” a lot. Note that there are two large enemies that patrol around, make some space to safely take them out. At the back of the chamber is another boss with large telegraphs and a tether attack. Kill him, finish rescuing your friends, and then return again to the central chamber.

Phew, that was a workout, good thing there’s only one path left now! The door to the east will open, and you can follow this route to the captain’s chamber. I usually clear out the spikehordes on one side to give myself some extra room before engaging him. The ikthian weapons will work on him, so you can always try that to help take him down faster, although you do run the risk of it enraging him instead. Once he’s finished you just have one more mob to kill and a game of simon to destroy the ship and activate the escape pods. Hooray! That wasn’t so bad was it?

Hooray! We’re outta here!

Wait, what? This mission is still going? Yep, it is time for the “epilogue”. When the screen clears, you’ll be standing in front of a control panel. Use it, and you’ll take control of a maintenance drone inside the damaged ship. Navigation here is tricky since you are floating in zero gravity. Do your best to avoid the drifting debris, and head out of the room and down the hallway. There are 6 life support panels to activate in the large room, and two more in the smaller room on the lower right hand side. You must be close to the panel, target it, then press “1” to activate it. If you take heavy damage you can move to a charging station and use your “2” ability to repair. Losing all your health will transfer you back to your body, and you’ll have to interact with the panel again to take control of another drone.

Positioning the camera overhead makes the path much clearer

Ok life support’s back up, time to open the hatch and get out of here. Seriously? There’s still more to do? Fine, I guess we can go and fix the gravity. Make your way across the room, and target the hookfoots (hookfeet?) and use your “T” ability on them to freeze them. Avoid the vents along the walls which occasionally send out a freezing blast. Keep following the path until you reach the laser grid. The beams probably won’t do enough damage to kill you, but they will bounce you around and annoy you. I usually turn my camera so I have a top-down view here, which makes it easier to see the gaps. Double jump is your friend, as is the pile of junk on the left side which you can use to bypass some of the beams. Reaching the end of the hallway will deactivate the lasers. Then you can jump up the junk pile again and into the next room.

Here we’ll meet the last enemy of the mission. He has the same large telegraph moves as the rest of the big ikthians we’ve already dealt with. Fun fact: if you happen to save an ikthian weapon, you can use it against this guy too! Once he’s down you just need to make your way around the room to seal off the 5 valves along the walls, then hit the switch on the floor to fix the gravity. Finally! All done!

Wait. OH *BLEEP* NO. There’s more? Leave the engine room and head down the hallway to the main chamber. Oh. Hey. They threw us a party! Congratulations, we’re finally finished!

Differences between normal and vet: There’s very few differences here. On normal you don’t have any ikthian weapons, which could be a blessing or a curse depending on your luck. There are also no lasers to jump through in the final section on normal mode.

Other Thoughts: This is the longest of the shiphands. I was honestly surprised that the run time on this one is only a couple minutes longer than Fragment Zero, because it feels significantly longer. I am constantly wishing it either had one less wing on the ikthian ship or that it would just end when you reach the escape pods, since that feels like a natural place to stop. Also of special note, the section where you pilot the repair drone can be particularly awful if you are prone to vertigo or nausea. Fun times!

Even after all those complaints, this one still manages not to be my least favorite. That title goes to our next shiphand mission. Tune in again to see me complain about our 7th and final (for now!) Shiphand Buddy mission: The Gauntlet!